Crime numbers reveal justice system's failure

If you need more evidence violent crime is on the rise in this province, check out the latest publication by Statistics Canada on incarceration rates in this country.

Manitoba has the highest percentage of violent adult criminals sentenced to jail compared with any other province in Canada.

And we've seen a 20% increase in the number of violent criminals admitted to jail over the past five years.

According to Statistics Canada's The changing profile of adults in custody, 2006/2007 -- released yesterday -- 59% of adult offenders sent to provincial jail in Manitoba committed a violent crime. That's close to three times the national average of 22%.

It's stunning, really.

And it's well above provinces such as Saskatchewan, where only 19% of offenders sentenced to jail committed violent crimes.

In fact, only the Northwest Territories has a higher violent crime incarceration rate than Manitoba at 66%.

What it means is we have a more violent mix of offenders that we place behind bars than in any other province in Canada.

But that wasn't the only startling statistic for Manitoba in yesterday's report.

The number of violent offenders sentenced to custody was up 20% in 2006/07 to 2,105, compared with 1,694 in 2001/02.

The number grew almost every year during that period.

We hear a lot of criminologists telling us crime is down in Winnipeg and in Manitoba. Yes, overall crime is down when you include everything from shoplifting to murder.

And some levels of violent crime are down, too, especially those that may not be serious enough to warrant jail time, like some forms of first-offence assaults.

But when it comes to violent crimes serious enough to warrant time behind bars, the numbers are up substantially. Granted it's only one way of measuring violent crime -- there are many others.

But these numbers don't bode well for those who argue violent crime is falling or is stable in this province.

You might be able to say that about a province like Ontario, where the number of incarcerated offenders who committed violent crimes dropped to 5,829 in 2006/07 from 10,125 six years earlier, according to StatsCan.

Or even in Saskatchewan, where the numbers fell to 656 from 881 during the same period.

But not here.

Our numbers are up.

What it means is we need more policing tools and more police resources. We need longer prison terms for repeat, violent offenders so they don't keep coming back through the revolving-door system.

We need tougher sentences for youth criminals to help discourage them from becoming career criminals.

The slap-on-the-wrist approach has failed miserably.

And we need more preventive programs to try to catch kids before they fall through the cracks.

One thing's for sure, we have to do something. We can't put the blinders on and pretend Manitoba doesn't have a violent crime problem.

When our violent crime numbers are so out of whack with the rest of the country, something has to be done.

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